Thursday, September 01, 2005

Orhan Pamuk

ISTANBUL, Aug. 31 -- An acclaimed Turkish novelist, Orhan Pamuk, has been charged with the "public denigrating of Turkish identity" and faces a possible prison sentence of three years, his publisher said Wednesday.

The charge stems from an interview that Pamuk gave to a Swiss newspaper in February in which he said certain topics were regarded as off-limits in Turkey. As examples, he listed the massacre of Armenians in 1915 and the ongoing war between Turkish security forces and Kurdish guerrillas. (Washington Post)

I mentioned back in April that Pamuk's detractors had ordered his books removed from the shelves before determining that there were actually no Pamuk titles on the shelves. (see Kurdish Media News)